I really have a great deal of humility in that department, and a great deal of respect for people who spend their lives learning how to make these amazing preparations.

I cook everything. I love Mediterranean cooking, I love Asian cooking. I do lots of Japanese noodles.

Two words to improve any dish. Ba, Con

It's very important to me that people who are actual chefs and other professionals in the culinary world, understand that I'm not, and have never held myself out as being, like a CIA trained chef.

You know the great irony is that people think you have to have money to enjoy fine food, which is a shame.

Cooking for people is an enormously significant expression of generosity and soulfulness.

People want honest, flavourful food, not some show-off meal that takes days to prepare.

However, I was a restaurant critic at Chicago magazine before I worked at Esquire, and I've been a really enthusiastic home cook for a long time. It's just something I'm passionate about.

My place in Chicago is a 105 year old house, but I really like contemporary spaces too, so it's refreshing and fun to be in a space where you can do contemporary things.

If I have committed any culinary atrocities, please forgive me.

In actuality, there was casting for the show and it was pretty difficult.

There is no such thing as a good writer and a bad liar.

Perhaps fate brought us together, And the incidents in between made us close, Falling in love was a simple choice, But breaking my heart, that was yours.

To will the impossible is usually a sin of indolence.

We're physiologically wired differently.

Light for some time to come will have to be called darkness.

I'm not interested in trying to have people who might like other kinds of music follow me. I don't want to please them.

I'm bad at picking heroes.

People who think they're free in this world just haven't come to the end of their leash yet.

The invitation to repent is rarely a voice of chastisement but rather a loving appeal to turn around and to “re-turn” toward God.

Feminism to me means fighting. It's a very nuanced, complex thing, but at the very core of it I'm a feminist because I don't think being a girl limits me in any way.